Chapter Three: Love, after the Deer Apocalypse
In an orange autumn world, and overlooking a winding gray creek—silver, this morning, a sea of yellowing blacknut trees and kudzu, both invaders foaming far below, and alongside that, Charlotta looked down and breathed smile at the dizzying rush below and the incredible, orgasmic pangs within. The sky above was a whitening blue, the sort of maybe blue that a city sky never is. And there were birds. She didn’t care about those birds. The almost not sounds he was making, those incensed her. Those struggled to hear over every other sensation up from their hips together, and the cool air beneath her feet, that tickled them was an unfair reminder, at the same time, that they could both fall, that he might have lied and would not be able to catch her no matter what…
The Korean boy with the JCrew shirt was doing this to her. The popped collar now on the ground somewhere, torn open.
“Mike…”
One Black woman's mad-feroz fantasy fiction world of talking horses, cheeky damsels, lesbian assassins, cat cities and bedtime stories...
Showing posts with label deer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deer. Show all posts
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Saturday, February 2, 2013
She's a Mean Old H4 Bus, Cpt 2
Chapter Two: The Quiet, Angry-Faced Girl
The girl with the quiet, angry face did not, of course, call herself ‘girl with the quiet, angry face.’ She was Charlotta Phelps, but Charlotta was the kind of young woman who did realize strangers must call her ‘quiet, angry-faced girl’ and she relished having a quiet, menacing demeanor that kept people unseated with her—she was able to project her frustration, sharpen it, and then strangers didn’t approach. A little girl, she looked like one, but she set it up so that men on the street must have been frightened of her. Who needs mace in this city? She was really very good at scaring the men on the METRO, and that was her best defense, and also her favorite game. She reasoned that she had better like doing it to them. Her offense.
There were more than the homeless-looking men who stared to play the game with. She played the ‘don’t you dare touch me’ silent treatment with the business-looking men who stared at the way she wore her coat, her purse, her body. Leaning on the silver pole on the METRO train with hips cocked, as if she had had enough. All those business-looking men could not have been from DC, almost no one living in her city was anyways, but Charlotta had learned that these men could hurt her with their misunderstanding, shame her by making obvious the distance she (knew she feared she) saw between them, if she ever allowed them to get near and take her, and tap her number down, and text her later,
Ur so beautiful. Nice finally talking to someone on the bus. Wanna get coffee later?
The girl with the quiet, angry face did not, of course, call herself ‘girl with the quiet, angry face.’ She was Charlotta Phelps, but Charlotta was the kind of young woman who did realize strangers must call her ‘quiet, angry-faced girl’ and she relished having a quiet, menacing demeanor that kept people unseated with her—she was able to project her frustration, sharpen it, and then strangers didn’t approach. A little girl, she looked like one, but she set it up so that men on the street must have been frightened of her. Who needs mace in this city? She was really very good at scaring the men on the METRO, and that was her best defense, and also her favorite game. She reasoned that she had better like doing it to them. Her offense.
There were more than the homeless-looking men who stared to play the game with. She played the ‘don’t you dare touch me’ silent treatment with the business-looking men who stared at the way she wore her coat, her purse, her body. Leaning on the silver pole on the METRO train with hips cocked, as if she had had enough. All those business-looking men could not have been from DC, almost no one living in her city was anyways, but Charlotta had learned that these men could hurt her with their misunderstanding, shame her by making obvious the distance she (knew she feared she) saw between them, if she ever allowed them to get near and take her, and tap her number down, and text her later,
Ur so beautiful. Nice finally talking to someone on the bus. Wanna get coffee later?
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Sanur 2, Whiteblank
Champagne, Treachery and a little WhiteBlank
"You know," Jeremie snarled--or no, never that. Not on my baby. My baby love was definitely smiling, just gently off, when he said, "I didn't realize how close you and Tim still were. Only a couple of days ago, I was running for my life to an evacuation port, because the Hunter Alliance had been ousted from the Ruminati. It happened at our very own opening session. This is a new year, I could still taste the champagne on my tongue from that... oh you wouldn't believe the Victory Brunch of the Allies. Remember, I always dreamed of it, but it was Norton said to call it that, do you remember him too? But, as all the star-streaked galaxy flew by us on that flight from Wyle, I was stuck thinking... Who set us up? Who knew exactly which arms to twist votes out of in the Hunter's Alliance and surround the place with turned guard so fast?
"Then we got back to base here in DC, and I saw the new campaign posters all over the streets. Each one roared in bold about how we Hunters hadn't worked hard to restore anything at all, and that this last surviving Imperial Ungulati with his new 'repentant' senators were going to enforce order. Feast on all dissidents... But it was Tim's face I wanted to rip down from every Metro stop or bike stand. Not some half-deer's. Then again, if Tim hadn't bothered to change his face, not even now, then I would have noticed him years before, sneaking among our ranks. But why would he even go so far in the first place? I would have welcomed Tim back, I prayed for him all these years, he must have known I would. Ohhhh... I can't think. It's been snowing on and on, for weeks because of the posters. Posters, then snow. What ever happened to us, Golga?"
How could Commander Jeremie Dutch of the 1st Region's Interplanetary Hunter Alliance not know?
"Or no. No, I would have definitely wanted to see Tim's cheating face because... While I was waiting for the others to regroup and reboot, the very thought of lying, scheming little bitches returned another wonderful memory. You had to still be alive, somewhere. You, Golga."
Jeremy got nearer, pulses of white breath parted to show the real distraught face and form of a man who always felt so soothing and right, somehow regal in nature, however life roughed him up. Jeremie wasn't supposed to didn't flinch or erupt. He brooded, then stood to act. This new sparkling anger didn't fit him. "Golga. We're frozen and at our end with Emperor Crush--Tim's siege, and I need you to help me understand... Three days ago, you were sitting up late in your apartment mangling this thing, right?" Jeremie held up what was now a gunmetal cuff with wires torn out of it.
The pink paint-stripped, pried apart edges weren't dripping blood, but something close. That rose red stuff-of-life all biotech was immersed in behind its metal housing became a gelatin at some temperatures, like raw salmon flesh. Now that Free Me's innards weren't being kept at proper conditions, it dripped against the laws of physics and clotted on the cold floor, where Liyane craned her neck to watch. Only reminiscent of blood, Biotech Blood was meant to alarm the human instinct to safeguard complex and delicate technology most people used but couldn't understand. Light passed through what was something more like battery acid, as if it were a jewel.
In case studies Liyane remembered by wrote, a negligible percentage of people, usually those with distressed childhoods, or other terrible trauma were drawn to covet the robotic blood, play with it, as Jeremie had been doing. He now slammed abused Free Me on the steel table next to her exposed thigh and placed, regretting his temper, a stained screwdriver next to it. His hands were dripping with Bio Blood.
"So, this is a child's toy, Golga? Hunting rifles are outlawed, but you rigged an old deer hunting game from before Invasion, to target and shoot real deer, anything with the DNA. This is clever, I admit that, just like your old work. Perfect for today's deer police. I see that you used your thesis work after all, though none of us got our chance to graduate. How do I modify this so that when the Ungulates come back, it actually works?"
Liyane tried to speak, but only a frozen shudder passed over blistered lips. Why? Cold and discomfort whited any more focused thought than memories of textbooks.
"You must know something about its matrix, no Hunter engineer can untangle it... And it can't be that difficult either. Golga--Liyane, whatever, and don't you dare lie to me... You kept sharp somehow, when the WPP records say you were working as a kindergarten teacher for eight years. You must have some idea, anything?"
Where were her clothes? What was he going to do? Liyane saw that she was surrounded by metal odds and ends, silver utensils, machine parts. "Look at me, Golga. They didn't send the deer police after you. We checked before we got snowed in. The Ruminati had nothing to do with your salvation, this time. The new Emperor San'ur Crush sent his special Unglate Ops after you. After your treacherous ass!" he sparked, for no reason at all. "When we went into the police station, get your records out of the damned imperial system, my Hunters were dealing with the freaking SOU, Golga!"
He spoke at times, as if they were still in the old skip-and-smoke hunting group together. At others, they were friends and lovers verging on a tenuous reunion after hurt. The human brain just didn't fizzle that way, because of the cold? "I knew you were in witness protection, but the SOU was looking after you? So then, you do still talk to Tim, you and the Emperor are connected. Was it you, like I was thinking... on the ship... Was it you setting me up again on Wyle, before the Ruminati? Do you know that, right now, the man who loved you most of all, and your old friends can't get out of this bunker for food or potable water? We're left with... surviving on... Not even off this damned planet? We can't go anywhere. We're stuck here on Earth beneath a blizzard now because Emperor San'ur Crush, now knows where the other senators have fled! Because of you!"
"I love you too, Jeremie. Oh my baby... I never ever stopped." and that cracked and hurt at the corners of Liyane's blue lips. "Reboot? Matrices? You were gone, then... What... happened to you?"
Jeremie leaned elbows on the edge of the work table and covered his eyes. "No. This isn't right. I came back from the dead, for this shit?!"
Better luck next rebellion, spaghetti legs.
Jeremie raged at the broken piece of Free Me, stabbed it with the screwdriver a few times, and then smashed it on the ground. "...I still can't get it to shut up, either."
Liyane shivered with smile, tested his lips with one patient, frost-white finger, kissed him. So warm, at last.
He returned, "I should not have let you do that..." But then Jeremie let Liyane do it again.
Why did he smell so strongly of biotech blood? All over him. Like the last time she had seen him. How long ago had that been... Jeremie's warm torso speared through by twelve-points, blood smear as his chest was forced up, let down the glass again. His death cracked the camera lens for even more dramatic effect... On a fine, Falcene biotech television screen. Rose at the flat frame edges... One could smell the crushed snow and copper blood, as if truly there... Beyond, was a floor-length square of winter's light coming from the window. Neighbors outside pushed up their fine apartment windows and threw turquoise streamers down into the streets of Falcinetya City.
Liyane remembered that she changed channel to a cooking show rather than react, but that filled the apartment with roasted garlic and it made her hungry. Ignore it. Tighten laces of the Nude Form, is it a little better? The buy-all-day channel smelled like the gentle parfum of a fancy downtown department store. Maybe plump here or tug down a bit more, tighten there... No. Not enough. "Turn screen off."
My lovely, as you wish. And then, the television extinguished.
On that day, Liyane breathed and renewed a focused admiration of her own naked silhouette in the mirror. Tightened laces up to a blue ribbon sewn through platinum eyeholes in her shoulder blades. Things were going to be alright. New body, new money, on the right side of the empire now. Life was already getting better. Liyane further willed it, and the lights thanked her for igniting them. A hopeful rose red mood light made the apartment smell like the hollow romantic burn of a candle. Liyane forced her need still more, and the wool curtains drifted together, to shutter out a Falcene celebration of justice, through use of excessive broadcast violence. Now, take a bow, little woman: the last conceited act of your life.
Liyane awakened again, tossed head and hair back to find her knees bent and dragging on the silver floor. The sharp pain made her gasp, flatten tongue against the roof of her dry mouth, but she couldn't hear her own screaming. And there would always be a terrified part of her that couldn't stand it if the Nude Form bruised in places.
Above the quake and roar of fire-bombs, rifle blasts, and the steel sides of the Hunter Underground shaking, Liyane could hear the crack of hooves tramping in a constant gait larger than her desperate race to keep from ruining her good body. They had her arms and she was being dragged.
One gray furred face turned beneath its helmet with holes for antlers. Wet nose was licked, “Make sure Emperor San'ur Crush knows the Hunters stripped her and sold it. How many lifetimes worth, do you think?”
Liyane hanged head low again. Her legs burned with the effort, her feet pumping calf muscles that were raw, oozed, bled a harder red than anything inside of Free Me. Quick, panicked pulses of breath. Where was it? What happened to it? How could he...? It had been her only thing, the one they'd promised that made any sense, the one reason she could stand to go through any of it these long eight years!
Jeremie, 'my baby', and all her old Hunter rebel friends in need, had been ripping the Nude Form from Liyane's flesh in that cold, cold room. Now that the pain was bringing her red, slick, analytical and back alive, Liyane recognized the sharp tang of WhiteBlank in her mouth. Years ago, it was a drug only the galactic mob had the power to trade in. Effects: numbness to cold and pain, enchanting hallucinations. And, in the long term: borderline personalities, severe memory loss.
“Let us hope beauty is not what the great Crush wanted her for.” said the other half-deer soldier. It flicked its white spade tail as these half-animals always did on mention of their Emperor, to signal a worse danger coming.
. . .
Next: The Holidays may be drawing to a close, but it's always wintery on Wyle, the Ungulati Imperial Planet.
(Randitty-O-Meter 9: You either want your own Nude Form, or a sweet-talking TV. Damned sexy, sustainable Biotech.)
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Sanur 1, OO is for Stoolpigeon
Liyane Harcourt relaxed hold on the trigger when she saw what Timothy had already done to himself. She relaxed hold of her sense, while molten spray offended the safety, and the shade-blade whirled round her wrist. The pink-and-black bow limbs revolved fast to catch every stray projectile. Liyane took shivering hand to curl fingers against warm collarbone. And the stitches there, smooth as silt. Like tasting her ribbons in a worry, as a girl. Weapon above knobbed wrist joint passed through her, generous.
Congratulations, you have marked a no-point buck! Better luck next time, spaghetti legs.
Only natural, to slam the bright pink plastic torc against the wall and shut it up. Rapport of firebomb outside. Quake. Now, Emperor Z'jai Chen was standing directly over her, and he said:
'The loving Emperor will feast on all dissidents.'
And Timothy still had the horns of the Ungulati though she'd shot his printed face full of holes.
A breath to listen, then Liyane got the whirling pastel device out in front of her again and ran for up the chill corridor.
The place was still clean from the night crew, and even smelled so crisp, like the snow outside. No. That is ash, burning, ending. Ungulates always made places smell like this. Liyane readied, then slammed her shoulder into a stuck door a few times, then slipped against it and fell backward. The door drifted open a beat later, when she tried the knob.
Wak, wak, waaaaaak!
This time, Liyane grimaced dry lips. She faced a two-way mirror beyond her old interrogation table. Yes, this time a dramatic heroine was needed, to smash through it. Liyane took a chair, raised it over her head, fantastic tailored breasts heaving and all, and then the wooden legs rebounded against the dark glass so that they both fell over.
A mirror is not an acceptable target, smartypants. Try Free Me's pretty princess game. In the land of Happy Sunshine Foreverland, Princess Angelica must stop the evil witch from using a flock of black geese--
"MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHO'S THE UGLIEST OF THEM ALL?" Liyane stacked fists, moved them around in a circle, then shouted over the damned game.
A triumphant, You are the ugliest, Queen Evilmeana! Congratulations, you have freed your heart, the poor black geese, and saved the land of Happy Sunshine Foreverland!
One day, one beautiful day, Free Me would get dumped into a real bubbling cauldron. Then, grammar-checked with hot iron rods.
Free Me emitted a ray of black energy that caused the golden glass wall to gain racing silver hairlines, which deepened. Liyane clicked Free Mee back to the shade-blade, raised it, let it whirr and shield her from the sudden burst apart of glass shards. When it all stopped screaming, raining and cutting down, Liyane stepped through the shattered wall and found the station's XPS7-41 server in the next room.
A crouch, a reach at the solid box and several more artful clicks of Cheery-Cherry-Pink Free Me, Girls Only Edition. Liyane focused beyond that tight bracelet when layers of life’s colors and cold peeled away. The light woman stopped needing to see the spreadsheets and their windows, became entranced by dazzling calculation and linking to here, to here, to here, and deeper, so much deeper, seduced by the thrill knowing everything at heart’s first search. It began to feel as if she were truly reaching her arm deep into the machine, following the pomegranate seed sparks of near-sentience. She would find what could make her laugh and cry. Smart thing, to take technology in a more sensual direction. That was what sold bionic circuits, in the end:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, Sustainable IS Sexy.” Was how the voiced used to throb in those commercials. It sifted back to Liyane now. Pressed gently at the corneas of her eyes during the lull of search. We need a result now. No, no. Here comes start of a newsreel of cerulean advertisements. You want to get away from the snow and travel to Bermuda, don’t you? No deer, in Bermuda, dear. Shh, machine. Stop talking to me…
The palm of Liyane’s hand had the double 'oo' of stoolpigeon, it was that near to firing synapses, cruel milisecond, before her rigged-up efforts were forced to reveal their worth.
"Prisoner Numeral 47-G, Golga Rothschild, alias Liyane Harcourt. You are hereby under arrest, for crimes against the Milky Way Galactic Empire..." the nasal narration of life returned.
Liyane scrambled away from the crimson server and its smooth vapor. She aimed again through the broken frame of glass, this time, pretending to see. Lasers from enemy sights moved down from her forehead to settle in every place that mattered. One point of red light indicated the woman’s heart, the second wanted a kidney through her bones, and the last pointed ready to render any species sterile.
"Please..." Liyane begged, as she looked desperately for their hooves or antlers. Liyane clicked through all the different cycles of the Free Me: a tennis racket and ball, a guitar, frying pan, skis, until the limbs of the bow flipped up and deadly on either side of her forearm and she reset the game. "It was a long time ago, and I was afraid... How was I supposed to know a stupid smoke-and-skip group would ever manage to overthrow the fucking government?!” One last snorted behest from the soldiers, for her to desist.
Liyane fired several jubilant shots in defiant stead. The shade-colored bolts soared into the air, danced their trajectory and finally spelled out 'YOU LOSE' before white flickered everywhere, pain burst and her mind went stark as a page.
Free Me was a tool for punishing ignorance, and these weren't deer at all, but bipedal Ungulates. The machine had already warned her. No posters of deer. No half-deer. Only deer. The crossbow game was for animal-hunting only. Innocents learned so much faster that way, under the old regime.
These three armored Ungulates loped over to the Human woman, licking cold snub-noses. They knelt on springy haunches, flicked white tails with at the thought of reward.
That didn’t last long. Firebomb again, rifle plumes and bullets--real ones--burst their tall antlers at the joints. When the Ungulates turned to face the Rebels, the half-animals landed on faces and in triplicate. Chests, dead center. Everyone a kill shot.
A man in a wild orange jacket got down on one of his knees. “Golga. Mother-foyer…”
“Jeremie? Did you see that Tim… how did he get…”
“Him! How did you get—?”
“…San’ur Crush, he knows that we weren’t sleeping. And those yellow eyes… quite… wide awake.”
Real Jeremie, so him after all these years, he held on and helped her to sing the rest. Rich, bloodied hands stained Free Me.
The XPS7-41 server still rose in its whirr, as the real woman bled. It breathed scented light through its fans, at every off. There never was a more self-invested moan, in creation. Which was probably why man had been moved to make it. A her. Who would stand time, weather, and blood pooling over the floor, through revolution and revolution.
One sad swipe of the satin stitch across Liyane’s breast. These pretty, and evil things. What had they all come to? People had decided this? Don’t ever, never make me choose again.
And so a machine’s callous preening swallowed Liyane's last, reddest reminiscing.
. . .
Next: Would an evil San'ur Crush really come to your town? Or, would you have a one-way ticket blazoned onto your intergalactic, falsified criminal record somewheres?
(Randitty-O-Meter: 8, It's science fiction and it's all over the place. Yum.)
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